Court Rejects Plan To Broadcast Tenenbaum Trial

from the no-surprise,-but-disappointing dept

This doesn't come as much of a surprise, given earlier precedents saying that broadcasting a trial wasn't allowed, but an appeals court has officially told the district court in the Tenenbaum trial that it cannot webcast live from the courtroom. This is somewhat unfortunate, though, a bit of a sideshow issue. And, given the oddities involved in the lawsuit up until now (from all parties involved in the lawsuit), it's not clear how useful webcasting the courtroom proceedings would have been. Still, it does seem rather silly to limit the ability to webcast from a courtroom, and the RIAA's assertion that it would be a bad thing because the content would be "readily subject to editing and manipulation" simply makes no sense at all. That's true of any content. But do we see regular "manipulation and editing" of public appearances made by RIAA spokespeople? No, of course not.